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Microphones, clock hardware, light sensors, geolocation devices, Bluetooth hardware, WI-fi hardware, and accelerometers are all small enough to fit in an electr
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
Microphones, clock hardware, light sensors, geolocation devices, Bluetooth hardware, WI-fi hardware, and accelerometers are all small enough to fit in an electric toothbrush handle alongside a battery and a toothbrush motor.
One could write software which runs on the toothbrush and reports back everything it can sense in the area. This grants the upstream provider up-to-date information on the environment where the toothbrush is. It's not hard to see how this is profitable in an age where spying is big business. This need not have anything to do with dentistry. Businesses are typically more interested in making more money than they are in adhering to someone else's vision of consistency.
How this data is used is, as always, up to those who possess a copy of the data, and utterly indefinable now. For all we know, it might be handy to know that a Bluetooth device with ID XYZ was present near a given set of global coordinates at a certain time of day and date. Asking how the data is useful is hard to say specifically like asking why a library (public or private) would have a copy of a particular work -- that copy might be useful to someone someday and it is easier than ever to get the public to cooperate in their own loss of privacy by framing every issue around convenience.